I hear it is a wide array of options…what job can you get with a communications’ degree? Is it still valuable in the virus era?
Apparently, a job as a football player. 
(It’s among the most common majors among football players in the “Power 5” conferences.)
I’m not sure why the “virus” era would affect the value of a communications degree, but I’m happy to hear the OP’s theories.
As to the degree itself, much probably depends on whether the person who earned the degree has an adequate command of English. An application replete with mistakes such as writing “in a communications degree” instead of “with a communications degree” and weird constructions such as “a communications’ degree” instead of “a degree in communications” would probably make it harder for the applicant to get a job.
Of course, if the individuals hiring you don’t speak English well themselves, all bets are off.
It’s perhaps more relevant in the virus era than any other time. Of course, this depends on your location and what jobs are available in your market. But here are a few examples of jobs you can get:
- Writer/copywriter/editor: obviously dependent on your capacity to express yourself and how much you love language
- Journalist: requires the above qualities in addition to some journalism ‘background’. Unfortunately, newspapers and magazines are often reluctant to hire someone in a journalism role without prior experience. But maybe you can break over this barrier if you can demonstrate strong writing skills with a firm grasp on current affairs, politics, arts or any other field
- Social media specialist/community manager: if you’re kinda social media-savvy, this can be the first rung on the ladder to good positions at reputable companies
- Public relations/spokesperson/media relations: fairly straightforward. Companies hiring for these positions almost exclusively ask for a communications degree
- Digital marketing specialist: your degree + research skills + a reasonable grasp on Internet consumer behavior and user experience
- Marketing and PR agencies: many positions you can fill at a place like that
I have a BA in Communication Science* and I’ve been a technical writer for 16ish years. A number of my colleagues have the same base qualification.
the second* softest of the soft sciences, but it sounds fancy.
**with psychology flopping around in first place.
Recall that a undergrad major in X is not a job training program for a career in X. We’ve got people with all sorts of random-ass degrees in project management, vaguely-defined consulting and business jobs, etc.
But of course there are plenty of jobs with Communications in the title. And I see people in marketing, public relations.
Yes, all of these.
Plus Project and Account Management in creative agencies (design, advertising, PR, digital).
Also working in Marketing for pretty much any company in any sector you can imagine - any company of any decent size has a marketing team. With larger companies, they’ll have graduate trainee schemes you can join on graduation (although often highly competitive).
Missed this bit. Communications is EXTREMELY important for companies in the virus era. I have many clients who have furloughed staff (I work in the creative sector), but they’ve all kept on at least somebody in communications so they can keep their customers updated. Even my clients in the leisure and tourism sectors who furloughed basically everyone.
Hopefully, I have a communications degree and a friend of mine’s as well.
Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs says that degrees in communications, business, etc are not relevant anymore and Americans need to get back to a heavily blue collar handywork era.
What are you doing with your friend’s communications degree? Don’t you think you should give it back to the friend? And you also might want to sue your alma mater for awarding you a degree in communications without teaching you to use the English language correctly.
I would point out that Mike Rowe isn’t necessarily an expert on career guidance. He’s an actor (and one-time opera singer), who hosted a very popular TV series, which celebrated blue-collar jobs, and has parlayed that into an ongoing career doing the same. (That said, I do like Mike Rowe a great deal; he’s engaging, and seems to be very genuine.)
What he is right about is the fact that, over the past few decades, American culture has increasingly looked down on blue-collar jobs, and has elevated the importance of getting a college degree. I honestly do not think it’s an either/or thing: blue-collar jobs are important, and it needs to be possible for someone to live a financially-stable life while working at such a job, while at the same time, we need people doing white-collar jobs as well.
True.
I have a degree in communications.
My friend also has a degree in communications.
See, with a degree in communications, I expect you would see how your previous sentence (“Hopefully, I have a communications degree and a friend of mine’s as well.”) doesn’t say that.
And I’m sure you remember what Strunk and White said about “hopefully”.
Let’s quit dumping on the OP long enough to reassure him that their are plenty of career opportunities available to someone with a degree in Communications (and they don’t all have “Communications” in the job title) even in a time of social distancing. I’d point out that Mike Rowe graduated with a degree in communications.
The ability to craft effective messages and the skill to use various forms of media to reach an audience with those messages has driven humanity since the cave paintings at Sulawesi, El Castillo, and Lascaux.
There isn’t a simple answer, like there would be with something focused, like a Python Specialist Machine Learning Using R degree. So the real question is “What do YOU want to do with it?” It could be anything from helping business start-ups to churning out political propaganda to marketing snowboards.
It would really help if we knew where you’re at in your career… graduate from a tech school (ours has kickass Marketing and Graphic Design programs), or a four-year college? USA or another country? Native language? Oh, or did you change from another discipline? What’s your background? All those will make a big difference.
You should open a business together. An LLP. You can name it, “People Say…,LLP”. Writing concern and Just Asking Questions click bait articles could be your thing. I think you’ve got all the qualifications. People who read those don’t pay much attention to grammar.
I would think that after one has gotten a degree in communications one would have realized all of this by now. If not, something really has gone wrong.
How do you spend 2-4 years in a major and then find yourself going to a message board asking a question like this?
I don’t write click bait threads.
I like discussion. If you don’t like my creativity of discussion, oh well.
I have a communication’s degree. I work in PR/small business.
I want to know what the rest of the thread thinks about it. Geez.